But really, why should we be driven to niche non-palm-oil products when sustainable palm oil is readily available? Yes, palm oil can be and is being grown sustainably. The global initiative that aims to bring together processors, manufacturers and NGOs known, as the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), had certified enough plantations to produce 1.75m tonnes of sustainable palm oil midway through this year. The tragedy is that less than 15% of this sustainable oil has actually been sold.

All of this is laid bare in the Palm Oil Buyers' Scorecard, recently published by the WWF. Sainsbury's, M&S and Unilever (which alone accounts for 6-8% of total world production of palm oil) are sitting relatively prettily in the top five. Morrisons, Waitrose, Nestlé and Boots appear in ugly positions much, much further down.

Brands often claim they source sustainably wherever possible. In this instance it is possible, yet the majority of the 59 companies investigated had elected not to use sustainable palm oil.

It is important that we put pressure on them to change immediately. As Sean Whyte of www.naturealert.org puts it: "Palm oil companies are grabbing what forests they can, while they can. Countless documentaries have shown thousands of hectares of bare land, where palm oil companies have bought licences to log forests and convert them to plantations."

And it will get worse. Output of crude palm oil (CPO) has increased 400% since 1990, and 89% of it comes from Malaysia and Indonesia. There is huge demand from bioenergy projects as well as for consumer goods – and according to the WWF, most of the remaining areas earmarked for plantation are forest.